Yeah, that was an interesting start. It was entirely Vettel's fault in my eyes, he squeezed far too hard even if Kimi hadn't been there. If he loses the championship now, it'll be his own fault - if the field had finished in the order it started, he'd have been 40 points ahead now rather than 28 behind.

It's not quite up to the point where Seb needs to win every race to ensure he wins the title (mathmatically he needs to win 5 of the remaining 6 if Lewis were to finish second in them), but I think he needs Lewis to have a disastrous race or DNF now because the cars seem to be evenly matched.

I think being a two thirds wet race Lewis would have possibly got to the front (or maybe finished 2nd) anyway, without the accident. It rather wiped out the Mercedes weaknesses and Ferrari/Red Bull's strengths.

So yeah, Vettel sort of screwed himself out of some points here, but he didn't necessarily screw himself out of a race win. It's really difficult to know where he would have finished in relation to Lewis had the crash not happened.

I reckon it was just about a racing incident personally, with Vettel sharing arguably most of the blame. He's actually done far worse this season! Like when he went doolally and deliberately drove into Hamilton in Azerbaijan.

I don't think there would have been much, if any passing at the front. Apparently Ricciardo's Red Bull had a gearbox problem, but there was no mention of it slowing him down at all (although I suppose they'd likely be making less aggressive gear changes to ensure it lasted the race), and Bottas couldn't gain any ground on him at all. I suspect all of the front runners would have been taking it a little easy because of the treacherous conditions, and frankly Seb's pretty bloody good at Singapore - I think he would have finished first.

I don't think you mean 40 points ahead Raid. If Hamilton had finished 5th and Vettel 1st there would be 12 points in it. I agree that with the wet conditions Hamilton would have made up some of those places as the pace difference was lessened. Also I think it is possible that Vestappen could have challenged Vettel for the win.

You're right... where the hell did I get 40 from? In my defense I was exhausted on sunday. Yeah, I'll go with that.

Edit: Oh I know; one of the Sky team pointed this out. From Vettel losing the 25 points of the win to Hamilton picking up an extra 15 points (the difference between 5th and 1st), there's a 40 point shift.

DjchunKfunK wrote:I couldn't help but cheer when they all collected each other.

Same, I had a good chortle. Watching it a few times, it is pretty much Vettel's fault, but I think it's a borderline racing incident for a couple of reasons. First, drivers were complaining of visibility problems on the formation lap due to the rain and the lights, so it may not have been as easy to judge distance between cars as the cameras suggest. Second, Vettel didn't know Raikkonen was on the other side and probably assumed he could squeeze Verstappen closer to the track. Verstappen did actually try and avoid him, which caused the collision with Raikkonen that set off the chain reaction.

On the other hand, Vettel's move was very, very aggressive and a fairly poor judgement. The other two I don't think are at fault at all, but Vettel is at least to some extent. The most depressing casualty was Alonso, who had amazing start which put him in third, only for him to be side-swiped off the track through no fault of his own.

I can't see how the rain made any difference in that incident; Vettel simply couldn't see Raikkonen from where he was. Vettel moved to block Verstappen who he expected to move over to the wall, but that's where Raikkonen was. I think Verstappen tried to brake (or stopped accelerating) to avoid the accident, but by that point Kimi's front-right was between Verstappen's lefts and two wheels touched, spinning Kimi into Seb's sidepod. There wasn't any spray between the cars at that point, and I can't see how less traction would have played a part.

Its just one of those incidents where nobody is really fully to blame. But come the end of the year, its that race where Ferrari will look back on and think, that's where it slipped away from us. I know there is still plenty of racing left, buts its a massive task for them now.